About Me

[in a cabin in the mountains, Jim wakes up and bangs his head on the table he was sleeping under]
Alex Rieger: Jim, are you alright?
"Reverend" Jim Ignatowski: Yeah...uh ... who are you?
Alex Rieger: I'm Alex. We're friends, we work together.
"Reverend" Jim Ignatowski: What? are we, lumberjacks?
Alex Rieger: No, we're cabdrivers.
"Reverend" Jim Ignatowski: I bet we don't do much business up here!

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Saturday, March 10, 2012

The CDC's National Center for Health Statistics was told to come up with Obamacare propaganda and they did. They even had highlights to punch-up the narrative:

Almost 24 percent of children under 18 years were in families having difficulty paying medical bills compared with 21 percent of 18- to 64-year olds, 10 percent of people 65 to 74, and 7 percent of those aged 75 and over.

Poor or near-poor people under 65 were more likely to live in families having problems paying medical bills or to have medical bills they couldn't pay at all.

More than one in five poor or near-poor people under 65 lived in families that had medical bills they couldn't pay.

Those 65 and over who were poor or near poor were more than three times as likely as people who were not poor to live in families that struggled to pay medical bills in the past year.

What jumps out at me is the fact that they're using exact numbers with fuzzy concepts. Just what does "difficulty paying medical bills" mean? I'd hazard a guess that those people are "having difficulty" with all their bills. Can you imagine, "Oh the cable bill, mortgage, gasoline, tuition, taxes, and automobile insurance - they're no problem. We sure have difficulty with those medical bills though." That's silly. You have "difficulty" with the totality of your bills, not with different parts of them. Whatever "difficulty" is.

Another indication that this report was ordered to prop up Obamacare: the children. Children under 18 who live in difficulty-families aren't alone in those families; you have to assume there are one or two adults in the family as well. Plus, the under 18 portion of the family isn't responsible for the bills. The under-18 statistic was chosen because there must be a slightly higher percentage of them than adults in these families. They count the children (the children!) because it jacks up the percentage to 23% and change, which they then round up to "nearly 24%."

The other three highlights concern the "poor or near poor." Again, what is "poor or near poor"? The term is as exact as "difficulty paying medical bills." Anyway, is it any surprise that they have trouble paying their bills? That's almost the definition of poor: the available money is less than the bills.

Get ready. The government is doing what the president tells them to do. They'll fiddle statistics, buy electric cars, and put the best face possible on all his follies.

The good news? They're the government and they often do a poor job. (like this)

BTW- Don't take it personally if you work for the government; I know many excellent people in the government. It's not their fault that the government turns their pearls into swine flu vaccine.